RBS - massive charges

JohnWK_2

Hi all,

I need a bit of advice as I'm getting absolutely nowhere with RBS. At the start of April I had an unusually high mobile phone bill (over £400) come out of my account by direct debit. At the time I did not have the funds in my account to pay this, it should have bounced but RBS decided to pay it anyway. This took me way over my overdraft limit of £100.

When I queried this with the bank, they stated it had been paid as a "goodwill gesture" because I am a good customer. In the same breath they informed me I was also being charged £6 per day whilst being over my overdraft limit. :mad:

I told them to cancel my account then and there, as I have a Royalties Gold account which I pay them monthly for (the benefits did actually save me money). I hand-delivered a letter to them on 12/04/11 with this instruction, to which I received a written acknowledgement stating they were looking into my complaint and would get back to me shortly. Since then I have sent them several letters with no reply (stupidly I did not send them recorded delivery), and my bank charges have been steadily increasing.

They also paid two more direct debits AFTER the one which took me over my limit, with the final total leaving me -£272.07, before they started heaping charges on. My account now stands at -£785.39, and the only communications I'm getting from RBS are threatening letters regarding my overdrawn status.

Any advice would be appreciated as I have no idea what avenue to turn down next, short of sending them a dog poo in a box.

stclair

You need to speak to lending to come to some arrangement.

As you went over drawn you will be charged £6.00 per day until your back into your agreed limit.

If you want to downgrade your account this can be done in branch. If you send a letter alot of back office admistration is now down in India which will delay your reply.

JohnWK_2

The customer services in my branch were dealing with the complaint, that is what the letter they sent me said anyways.

I'm only overdrawn because they paid a direct debit which they shouldn't have. I didn't have the funds there to pay it, and it took me massively over my overdraft limit. They've never done this before. I've had a few bounced direct debits in the past, some that were only going to take me £10 over my limit.

Is it even legal for them to take me over my OD limit like that?

stclair

Im shocked they paid it actually for such a large payment and no it not illegal.

However you could have cancelled the DD and asked for the payment to be recalled on the day it debited your account then non of this would of escalated to the situation your in now.

I would hold tight and wait for them to resolve your concerns.

I would also recommend you register for the Alerts Service for future reference:

http://www.rbs.co.uk/Downloads/global/Alerts_important_information.pdf

izools

First off all, they are under no obligation to bounce a DD if it will take you over.

Check the T&C - you will find that you agreed to the fact that by leaving the DD instruction in place when you don't have available funds you were formally requesting an unauthorised overdraft. You instructed the bank to pay the intruction out of unavailable funds by not cancelling the DD.

You also agreed that you can't close the account until it's at a £0 balance with no pending transactions against it hence it remains open and charges continue to accrue.

Unfortunately, you could have avoided all of this by simply cancelling the DD's you couldn't afford with the bank before they were due to come out, or filing an indemnity claim against them soon after they came out.

It's all too late now and you'll have to lump the fees you've been lawfully charged; although moving forwards you can atleast learn that these things do happen and that the onus is on you to cancell SOs / DDs ahead of time that you know you can't afford.

Best of luck with your future banking endeavours

JohnWK_2

It was an unexpectedly large phone bill. It usually comes out of my account every month with no dramas. I didn't even realise until about 4-5 days afterwards, at which point they told me it was too late to do anything.

A second point I'd make is that I've raised a complaint about this straight away, yet 5 months down the line they're still throwing charges on and ignoring me.

I opened up a new account with a different bank about 2 weeks after this happened, and have been using that event-free ever since. The RBS account is basically just sat festering and waiting for them to bother to respond to me, whilst at the same time accruing more and more charges as the months go by.

izools

Granted, but this doesn't negate the fact that you didn't cancel the DD ahead of time and you didn't do an indemnity when you saw it come out.

The onus is on you to check your bills and check your bank account frequently enough to prevent issues like this occurring. I presume you didn't check your mobile bill? Either that or you did, but you chose not to act upon the bill by cancelling the DD with the bank and coming to an arrangement with the mobile provider.

In this instance I'm afraid the bank have done nothing wrong whatsoever. They acted as per your instructions and the terms you agreed with them.

That's why they're ignoring you.

System

Bank accounts have Terms & Conditions which you have agreed to.

It is each individual's responsibility to manage their own funds. Don't blame the bank, or anyone else, for your lack of control of your own spending. The phone bill would have been made available before the Direct Debit Payment was due, you should have checked the bill. The bill amount cannot have been that unexpected, you must have been using the mobile phone more than usual, so should have expected to pay more.

You have let this drag on for several months and you now owe the bank a considerable amount so you should expect to pay what you owe plus the charges for the loan. The earlier you get it paid, the lower the charges will be. If you do not have the funds, sell something.

JohnWK_2

izools wrote: »

Granted, but this doesn't negate the fact that you didn't cancel the DD ahead of time and you didn't do an indemnity when you saw it come out.

The onus is on you to check your bills and check your bank account frequently enough to prevent issues like this occurring. I presume you didn't check your mobile bill? Either that or you did, but you chose not to act upon the bill by cancelling the DD with the bank and coming to an arrangement with the mobile provider.

In this instance I'm afraid the bank have done nothing wrong whatsoever. They acted as per your instructions and the terms you agreed with them.

That's why they're ignoring you.

I don't even know what an indemnity is. If it could've avoided this situation, why didn't the bank advise me of this when I contacted them as soon as I noticed the DD?

As for why they're ignoring me, if they say they're going to look into a complaint, they should do exactly that. Even if they turn around and say "tough luck".

BAA1 wrote: »

Bank accounts have Terms & Conditions which you have agreed to.

It is each individual's responsibility to manage their own funds. Don't blame the bank, or anyone else, for your lack of control of your own spending. The phone bill would have been made available before the Direct Debit Payment was due, you should have checked the bill. The bill amount cannot have been that unexpected, you must have been using the mobile phone more than usual, so should have expected to pay more.

You have let this drag on for several months and you now owe the bank a considerable amount so you should expect to pay what you owe plus the charges for the loan. The earlier you get it paid, the lower the charges will be. If you do not have the funds, sell something.

Very helpful, thank you for your input. So much for going easy on newbies.

noh

JohnWK wrote: »

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Very helpful, thank you for your input. So much for going easy on newbies.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

System

My appologies, I'd ignored your newbie status
Sorry, it may sound a little harsh but your best course of action is to pay off the loan before it gets any worse. I simply do not believe you have any real grounds for complaint with the bank.